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Chef Jake Kellie reveals what it's really like to appear on MasterChef

May 11, 2016

Jake Kellie, who appeared on last night's MasterChef Australia, dispels myths that the heat, the stress, the tension in the kitchen is all for show. The chef spills on his experience in the pressure test of his career.

Jake Kellie may have won acclaim as young chef of the year, but when he appeared before Marco Pierre White, Matt Preston, George Colombaris and Gary Mehigan in last night’s episode of MasterChef, he admits to facing one of the more nerve-racking experiences of his career.

“I didn’t care about being on television, I was more worried about what the judges would say about my dish,” he told delicious. “I did the cook and didn’t see Marco, Matt or the judges afterwards, so I had no idea if the dish was half decent.”

The young chef, known for his work under Scott Pickett at Melbourne’s Estelle and his recent shock move to take on his first head chef role at The Lakeside Mill in Pakenham, says the challenges viewers see on television are very real.

“There’s no hiding from the show while you’re there. The challenge is real and you have to cook for 60 minutes. It was nerve racking. They give you no indication of what your ingredients are. They take you out of the building afterwards so you can’t hear the judges talk. They make it as hard as possible,” says Kellie.

The chef dispels myths that much of the on-screen drama both in and outside the kitchen is fictional.

“I’ve heard people say it’s all for the show, but you really cook for 60 minutes, you have less than 15 minutes to think of a recipe, you’re genuinely frazzled, and you have no idea how you’ve gone until you face the judges at the end,” he says.

Told by chef Shannon Bennett that he would have to cook Italian, the young chef tried to work out whether his idea was “Italian enough”, he says. “Shannon was great, when the cameras were not on us he was keen for a chat.”

The MasterChef kitchen is no easy feat, says Kellie, who himself was surprised producers didn’t make it easier, even if just off camera. “It was definitely harder than I thought. You have this mentality that you don’t want to lose. It’s your reputation, you have to be willing to get yourself out there but you have to put everything at the back of your mind and think about the food.”

Marco Pierre White was first to judge Kellie’s dish. “He gave me a six. He liked the idea of what I did but thought I could have plated it better. I thought Matt would give me an easy time, because we’ve worked together even recently. But he didn’t.

“Matt looked at me and I thought ‘shit, here we go’. I started feeling nervous. He said not to mess with a classic, gave me a hard time and a six.”

The chef’s Italian dish was a veal carpaccio, guided entirely by the ingredients he was handed. He bashed out the tenderloin to make it paper thin, used a sun-dried tomato oil to dress it, and accompanied it with borlotti beans and baby courgettes, a little burnt butter hollandaise “to give it that feeling of egg yolk that you’d normally have in a tartare”. He added pickled onion and olive crumb and finished the dish with smoked onion ash, “quite simple really”.

The impact of his appearance on MasterChef is already being felt by the young chef, who says his restaurant has been full for the past two nights, at 50 covers a night.

“We did have four bookings for tomorrow night but after the show it’s now 48 booked. It’s making the restaurant busy. The staff are really enthusiastic about working here, they love being so busy. It’s an environment like we had at Estelle, where you’re busy every night, but in Packenham. Now we’re turning heads.”

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